I bet you didn’t know that!

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

By Julie Smith

There’s a fad going around Facebook (it may have played out by the time this goes to press.) Like most fads, it’s harmless: One of your FB friends assigns you a random number; whatever it is, you have to post that many facts about yourself, i.e., “Five Things Most People Don’t Know About Me.”

I received some numbers and wrote some posts. Truth is, I’m a pretty boring person who’s written a weekly personal column for 25 years, so there’s not a whole lot of mystery left. But here are a few facts that may surprise you. Or not.

5. When I make pancakes at home, I slather them with butter and syrup from the fridge. When I order pancakes at a restaurant and they bring me hot syrup, I freak out. Room temperature is acceptable, but hot? An abomination.

6. I have an adult stepson. I love him too much to write about him.

7. My favorite movie is “Tombstone.” Second place goes to “The Perfect Storm.”

8. I haven’t touched red meat in over three years, and I miss it every day.

9. After years of being terrified of flying, some kind of mental switch flipped. Now I love it.

10. I haven’t been to any of my high school reunions. I don’t get the whole looking back thing.

Ideally, as polite people in a civilized society, we should say, “Pardon me; I’m not sure I understand.”

That’s how I answered a nice Mediterranean woman who approached me in the grocery store last week. I think she was looking for the baking products aisle, but she could have needed a referral to a podiatrist. I just couldn’t tell.

So I said (in my North Carolina twang), “Par-din me, cooja ree-peat that?”

She looked at me and said, “Huh?”

Confusion is the universal language.

Julie R. Smith, who’s working on her doctorate in confusion, can be reached at widdleswife@aol.com.

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